Posts in Category: Lumedx Users

​MIPS, the Medicare physician reimbursement program set to begin in 2019, is causing healthcare providers to consider the use of registries, if they haven't already, as part of their workflow practices.

This Merit-Based Incentive Payment System, part of the Quality Payment Program (QPP) created under the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act of 2015 (MACRA), directs clinicians to meaningfully use certified electronic health record (EHR) technology, according to the American College of Cardiology.

One effect of the regulations is the promotion of the use of registries to help clinicians manage the reporting of the EHRs. MIPS allocates five bonus points in its scoring mechanism to clinicians who are using registries. "An eligible clinician can earn bonus points by completing additional measures under the Public Health and Clinical Data Registry Reporting objective, such as reporting to a specialized registry (i.e., the PINNACLE Registry) or using certified EHR technology to complete certain activities in the Improvement Activities category, such as managing referrals and consultations," the American College of Cardiology reports.

It makes good sense to incentivize use of registries, says Raymond R. Russell, III, MD., Ph.D., because they can help physicians and their teams face a challenge to develop systems that help fulfill reporting requirements with minimal burden. "For many cardiologists, an effective, efficient approach to reporting quality measures data is to take advantage of the registries at our disposal," he writes in Cardiovascular Business.

Qualified Clinical Data Registries (QCDRs), allow clinicians to report on specialty-developed measures that are robust and uniquely geared to their area of practice, thus fulfilling CMS reporting requirements while closely tracking the quality of their practices.

"As the cardiovascular community moves forward with the new value-based models for performance evaluation and reimbursement, it will be essential to develop effective tools that support efficient completion of requirements," Russell suggests. "Some tools, such as registries, are proven and available to us now."

LUMEDX, as the leading independent provider of ACC and STS registry software, believes registries are the cornerstone ao cardiovascular data intelligence and the foundation of a true CVIS (Cardiovascular Information Systems). For more information, visit our Registries page: http://www.lumedx.com/registries.aspx.

​Although much progress has been achieved in digitizing the healthcare system, today's health IT infrastructure still struggles to support a transition to "value-based care," according to a new report from the American Medical Informatics Association.

"Provider organizations pursuing new models of health care delivery and payment are finding that their electronic systems lack the capabilities needed to succeed," the study asserted. "The result is a chasm between the current health IT ecosystem and the health IT ecosystem that is desperately needed."

The report, titled, "Crossing the health IT chasm: considerations and policy recommendations to overcome current challenges and enable value-based care," outlines policy recommendations for patients, providers and researchers to improve access to healthcare data for all the groups and proposes new standards for IT systems and applications.

LUMEDX, the leader in cardiovascular data intelligence and a pioneer in cloud-powered healthcare solutions, offers a comprehensive suite of software and services enables meaningful analytics, high-performance workflows, optimal integration of clinical and HIS data, and improved continuity of care.

For more information on LUMEDX HealthView solutions, please visit www.lumedx.com or email info@lumedx.com.​

Hospital leaders can gain many advantages from aggregating financial, clinical and operational data to create dashboards that help them run their CV service line more effectively.

The LUMEDX webinar, "Improving Performance with Clinical Data Integration: How Orlando Health Used Dashboards to Better Manage its CV Service Line," will outline how to achieve these outcomes.

The complimentary webinar will take place Thursday, May 4, at 10 a.m. PT, 12 p.m. CT and 1 p.m. ET.

In this webinar, Rick Jones, RPH, Business Support Manager, Cardiovascular Service, Surgery and Pharmacy, Orlando Health, will outline how this comprehensive private, not-for-profit healthcare network in Florida is integrating data and making it available to decision-makers on a regular, refreshable basis to improve productivity, clinical and financial outcomes.

It's becoming increasingly clear that healthcare providers are reaping big dividends from hosting data and services in the cloud.

"Hosting applications in the cloud can help you scale as you grow, collaborate with partners and patients, store and manage huge amounts of patient data and get a bigger return on your IT investments in the long run," Molly True wrote last week in HealthCare Business & Technology

She cited the ability for hospitals to combine a public cloud offering with a private cloud offering where the systems are connected and interoperate with other existing systems. Providers can also keep some of their most sensitive data on their premises and some of their applications.

The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services is following this trend. Last week, it announced plans to increase the adoption rate of cloud services this year from 18.5 percent to 30 percent of its systems.

"We have worked to embrace cloud," HHS Chief Information Officer Beth Killoran said. "If you do cloud properly, the implementation should be transparent to the workforce. When we did our financial systems upgrade last year, we had to provide training on the new capabilities -- not the platform. The effort has been a great success."

Moreover, in a recent survey, prominent healthcare executives predict a drastic shift from on-premise IT infrastructure into the cloud. That includes electronic health records, clinical decision support and analytics.

LUMEDX's HealthView delivers HIPAA-compliant data management and analytics solutions via the cloud, making important data available to your providers-anywhere, anytime-while reducing the time and money you spend on IT infrastructure. To learn more about our various cloud and on-premise options, contact us at info@lumedx.com.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has pushed back the implementation date for its bundled payments for cardiac care from July 1 until Oct. 1, according to Cardiovascular Business. It also suggested it could further delay the model until Jan. 1, 2018.

CMS announced the delay of the program, titled the Cardiac Rehabilitation Incentive Payment Model, this week in the Federal Register.

The bundled-payment program would allow approximately 1,120 acute care hospitals in 98 designated markets to hold on to the savings they achieve if they spend less than the target price for a 90-day episode of care for bypass and heart attack patients. However, hospitals that exceed the target price must repay Medicare -- and target prices will be determined retrospectively.

CMS previously predicted that the program - which also covers knee and hip replacement - would save the federal government as much as $159 million between now and 2021. In 2014, the CMS said, heart attack treatment for 200,000 patients cost Medicare more than $6 billion.

The new Secretary of Health & Human Services, Tom Price, has been a critic of the program, objecting to the mandatory nature of the initiative. Seema Verma, the new CMS administrator, said during her confirmation hearing in February that she preferred a gradual expansion of new payment models, Cardiovascular Business reported.

The CMS announcement said an additional three-month delay is necessary to allow time for additional review, "to ensure that the agency has adequate time to undertake notice and comment rulemaking to modify the policy if modifications are warranted, and to ensure that in such a case participants have a clear understanding of the governing rules and are not required to take needless compliance steps."

CMS added that participants would have more time to prepare for these models with the delay and that it would be preferable for payment periods to align with the calendar year. As a result, the CMS said, it is seeking comment on delaying the bundles until January 2018.

From one hospital to another, the cost of treating heart attack patients varies by as much as 50 percent. Does your hospital have a plan to meet the target prices for bypass and heart attack patients? LUMEDX's Cardiovascular Performance Program can help. Click here to find out how.

LUMEDX is pleased to announce that we've welcomed another new client to our family: Adventist Health System. The faith-based health system is headquartered in Florida and has 45 hospital campuses with more than 8,300 licensed beds in nine states.

Implementation of LUMEDX's Cardiovascular Information System in the Adventist organization will begin at Florida Hospital Tampa. The next phases of the long-term CVIS project will be implemented at nine Central Florida facilities.

"LUMEDX has been working with Adventist Health System facilities for nearly 20 years, and during that time our partnership has produced a track record of success," says Mickey Norris, vice president and general manager at LUMEDX. "We're extremely proud to help meet Adventist Health System's cardiovascular information needs into the future. Our tools will provide operational, clinical and financial analytics that will allow Adventist Health System to quickly identify best practices in each of its cardiovascular facilities-maximizing efficiencies and minimizing costs."

New research shows that U.S. hospitals could save $300 million annually--and see fewer complications--if they use transradial access for percutaneous coronary interventions, and release patients on the same day.

Analysis shows that same-day, transradial PCIs cost $3,500 less than discharges that did not occur on the day of the procedure. Compared to transfemoral interventions, transradial PCIs also reduce:

Bleeding

Vascular complications

Transfusions

"We now have identified a mechanism for hospitals to improve their efficiency and lower costs that is associated with improved PCI outcomes simultaneously," says the study's lead author, Amit P. Amin, MD, of Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis, in a news release.

"Our data show there is a tremendous potential to reduce costs of PCI, reduce complications and achieve a 'win-win' for both patients and hospitals," Amin adds. "Hospitals that redesign their care pathways to perform more same-day, transradial PCIs can potentially save hundreds of thousands of dollars each year."

As this research indicates, a major part of achieving cost savings is reducing avoidable complications. But reducing PCI complications is just one part of the puzzle; CV service lines can reduce adverse events for a myriad of other procedures.

There are also opportunities to achieve cost savings in other ways, such as by improving throughput and making billing easier and more accurate. Identifying these opportunities is crucial for physicians and cardiovascular leadership.

That's where LUMEDX's Cardiovascular Performance Program comes in. This new program offers a no-charge analysis of your facility's performance on complication rates and other issues that reduce revenues. It then generates a detailed plan for improvement.

The opportunities for better clinical and financial performance are dramatic. Learn more by contacting the Cardiovascular Performance Program team at info@lumedx.com or 800-966-0699.

See you at ACC: If you'll be at ACC.17 this month, stop by and say hi at LUMEDX Booth 2411. Or schedule a meeting to find out about the latest innovative software and services that can help you improve care and dramatically reduce costs across your CV service line.

Cardiovascular professionals from around the world will be in Washington, D.C., this month for the American College of Cardiology's Scientific Session and Expo -- and LUMEDX will be there as well.

Set for March 17-19, the event will feature interactive debates, education and scientific presentations. ACC.17 also offers 11 learning pathways, allowing participants to focus on their choice of topics. More than 300 sessions will offer dual CME/MOC credit.

A myriad of clinical topics will be discussed, among them:

Atrial fibrillation

Acute heart failure

Cardiac surgery

Invasive cardiovascular angiography and intervention

Nuclear imaging

Pediatric/congenital cardiology

Vascular medicine

If you're going to ACC, stop by and say hi at LUMEDX Booth 2411: We'll be presenting the latest CV data-management tools and our new Cardiovascular Performance Program, which offers a no-charge analysis of your facility's CV service line performance on complication rates, including the associated costs -- and opportunities for improvement.

If you'd like to schedule a one-on-one meeting with LUMEDX,click here.

Christiana Care Health System, one of the largest healthcare providers in the mid-Atlantic, has achieved wide-ranging improvements in both clinical performance and business outcomes after implementing strategies designed to ensure top-quality care delivery while at the same time containing costs.

Christiana's success began with a data strategy that will be laid out in a complimentary webinar called Delivering Clinical and Business Excellence: The Power Of Data Transparency. Subtitled How Christiana Care Leverages Cardiology Data to Improve Care Quality and Contain Costs, the webinar will take place on Thursday, Feb. 2.

It will include discussions on:

How data transparency drives cost and outcome awareness and impacts the CV service line

Christiana Care's experience comparing the costs and benefits of undertaking a costing model

The value of case attributes

Presented by Leslie Mulshenock, Director of Heart & Vascular Services, and Matthew Esham, Heart & Vascular Service Line Manager, the webinar will also include a summary of the costs and benefit of Christiana's strategic improvement plan, which has resulted in optimal reimbursement, lower costs-per-case and higher patient satisfaction.

A live Q & A will conclude the Feb. 2 event, which will take place at 1 p.m. Eastern time, 12 p.m. Central and 10 a.m. Pacific.

LUMEDX is happy to welcome to our family three new clients: Marshall Medical Centers; Holyoke Medical Center; and Baylor Scott & White Health, the largest not-for-profit healthcare organization in Texas.

The first Baylor Scott & White location to implement the LUMEDX solution is Baylor Jack and Jane Hamilton Heart and Vascular Hospital in Dallas. LUMEDX is providing the hospital with comprehensive cardiovascular data management that:

Connects isolated data sources,

Integrates with the enterprise electronic health record (EHR), and

Eliminates redundant data collection.

Holyoke Medical Center has gone live with our PACS with Echo Workflow software. After all phases of the CVIS deployment are completed, the secure, cloud-delivered software-as-a-service (SaaS) solution will provide the medical center-located in Holyoke, Massachusetts-with comprehensive management of its Echo, Nuclear, ECG, Holter and Stress workflows, and will offer remote access for physicians, allowing them to access data and complete reports from any location.

The deployment for Marshall Medical Centers is taking place at two hospitals: Marshall Medical North in Guntersville, Alabama; and Marshall Medical South in Boaz, Alabama. Both hospitals have implemented Echo Workflow and ECG-Holter software, which will help them improve performance and quality of care while containing costs and minimizing inefficiency.

We look forward to long and productive relationships with our new partners!